New Innovative Collaborative for the Primary Health Networks

The introduction of Primary Health Networks (PHNs) ushers in an exciting era for the healthcare sector. The Improvement Foundation congratulates all successful applicants.

The Improvement Foundation is excited to be working with PHNs who have already committed to participating in our PHN Innovation Collaborative.

The PHN Innovation Collaborative is specifically designed to ensure that PHNs can demonstrate improved outcomes within their first year of operations.

Based on the highly successful Collaborative methodology, a quality improvement model that achieves incremental, rapid and locally relevant improvements across a broad range of clinical and practice business issues, the PHN Innovation Collaborative will:

Establish benchmarking by July 2015 across all participating PHNs

Operate Australia’s first ongoing Collaborative focussed on achieving PHN objectives related to improving the performance of primary healthcare in a structured and purposeful manner

Provide a mechanism for PHNs to directly influence the expansion of the nationally recognised and structured data sets to better meet their needs over time

Provide a community for PHN staff that support general practices to collaborate and share ideas.

All PHNs are invited to participate, thereby maximising the potential for the Innovation Collaborative to make meaningful and sustainable improvements in primary healthcare.

The Improving Healthcare International Convention (IHIC) from 16 to18 November 2015 at the Pullman & Mercure Melbourne, provides the forum to showcase practical ideas on how service delivery can be improved to meet the challenges of providing the highest quality healthcare in today’s health system.

The IHIC has secured a number of high profile international and national healthcare professionals who will come together with key decision and policy makers and quality improvement experts spanning primary, community and hospital healthcare.

The IHIC Program addresses four key themes that include both clinical and non-clinical aspects of healthcare. Submit your abstract with focus on innovative, cutting edge, practical solutions relating to one of the following four key themes:

Advance Integration Connect the elements of health care to improve communication and efficiency across health providers.

Register now to save $200 with Earlybird Registrations – register by 11 September 2015. Visit www.ihic.improve.org.au to register.

Changing a Tiger’s Stripes with Quality Improvement

Through the Townsville Integration Care Program, the path of a high care needs patient, Lionel “Tiger” Corrigan, was mapped. As a high care needs patient with ongoing chest pain, arthritis, back pain, Type 2 diabetes, kidney disease and depression, Tiger has many health providers and has had numerous hospital admissions over the years. In the aim to identify ways to reduce Tiger’s hospital admissions and to understand whether the current service provision is timely and of high quality, a team from the Improvement Foundation mapped Tiger’s latest hospital admission journey. From this map detailing the process, it was easy to identify whether there were any duplication of services or gaps.

Tiger’s health providers were then able to visualise how various members of the wider care team fit together. As part of this process, it also offered each provider an opportunity to assess how they can better improve their systems for patients with high care needs.

Watch this video to see more about Tiger’s story and the process of mapping the patient journey.

Collaborative Ideas Leading to Outstanding Improvements

Not only has the Australian Primary Care Collaborative Program (APCC) helped over 400,000 patients and continues to deliver outstanding results, it has also provided participants with ideas that are producing innovative changes in the health sector.

The Doctors Control Panel, a software system that streamlines preventative care tasks, was created by APCC participant Anton Knieriemen, a GP who had an interest in improving preventive care.

Encouraged by the feedback from fellow GP’s at a learning workshop where Anton showcased his product, Anton added extra improvements to permit patients to view their routine results online, thereby reducing telephone calls and unnecessary visits to surgeries.

Anton attributes the success of his product to the APCC program. “The APCC is a great forum for spreading improvement ideas in clinical care and the Doctors Control Panel owes much of its success to it”.

Share the Care

The Gold Coast Integrated Care program brings healthcare providers together to focus on proactively managing high risk patients such as the elderly and those with chronic and complex diseases.

A major feature of the program, and integral in supporting patients improved care, is the implementation of the Shared Care Record system. The Shared Care Record is a secure online summary of a patient’s health information which results in providing accurate, up-to-date, and complete information about patients at the point of care.

The Improvement Foundation is assisting with the uptake and training of the Shared Care Record, and also providing after-hours technical support to participating practices.

The program is a joint initiative between Gold Coast Health and Gold Coast Medicare Local and the Shared Electronic Health Record is from Extensia.

New National Patient Blood Management Collaborative

The Improvement Foundation is supporting this new collaborative program that aims to increase the number of patients who are having elective surgery who are not anaemic and/or iron deficient; and also aims to implement best practice in Patient Blood Management more broadly. Over 11 hospitals and health services from around Australia will be involved this new initiative.